Russia launched a wave of ballistic missiles, drones and guided bombs across Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on Sunday, killing at least six people and wounding dozens, Ukrainian authorities said, underscoring the country's continuing shortage of US-made Patriot air defence systems.
Moscow has intensified its use of ballistic missiles in recent weeks as it seeks to curb Ukrainian strikes on oil facilities deep inside Russia, which have caused critical fuel shortages affecting both military operations and civilian supplies.
US President Donald Trump has said he is prepared to grant Ukraine licences to produce Patriot missile systems—the country's most effective defence against Russian ballistic missiles—which could strengthen Kyiv's air defences. However, the details and timeline remain unclear, and full-scale production could take years.
The latest assault on Kyiv began at around 1:30am and continued for several hours, with explosions echoing across the capital.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia launched 41 missiles and 125 drones across the country overnight. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said most of the missiles were aimed at Kyiv.
Later on Sunday, a Russian strike on a postal facility near Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, killed three people and injured at least 20, according to the regional administration.
Russian guided bombs also struck the cities of Kherson and Sumy, killing at least one person in each attack, local authorities and Ukraine's emergency service said.
The strikes on Kyiv triggered fires in five districts, damaging residential buildings, office and industrial facilities, a dormitory and several vehicles, according to Ukraine's State Emergency Service.
Viktoria Shejko, 32, said she was sheltering in the corridor of her apartment building with her husband and seven children when the bombardment began.
"When the alarm started, we checked that there were ballistic missiles, then went into the corridor. Then it started exploding — one missile after another," she said.
She described the relentless attacks as "very difficult psychologically".
"It used to be once a week or even more rarely, but now, if not every day, then every other day," she said.
Rescuers pulled four people from a burning house in Kyiv's Sviatoshynskyi district, while firefighters rushed to rescue residents from a three-storey building engulfed in flames in the Shevchenkivskyi district, where one person was found dead. Fire crews also tackled blazes in the Solomyanskyi, Desnianskyi and Dnipro districts.
Russia's Defence Ministry claimed the strikes targeted facilities linked to Ukraine's military, including plants producing Flamingo drones and components for Neptune guided missiles, as well as a postal terminal allegedly used to store dual-use goods and assemble drones, robotic systems and electronic warfare equipment.
Separately, two oil tankers were struck at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal off Russia's Black Sea coast, forcing a halt to oil loading operations, the consortium said.
The strike on the ASIA and NISSOS tankers at the port of Novorossiysk caused a fire aboard the ASIA, which was later extinguished. The CPC did not identify who was responsible for the attack.
It said there were no casualties or oil spills, and that both vessels—sailing under the flags of Liberia and the Marshall Islands, respectively—remained afloat.
Russia and Ukraine have sharply intensified attacks on shipping in the Black and Azov seas over the past week. Ukraine says its strikes on oil tankers are intended to disrupt fuel supplies to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. Kyiv also says it is targeting Russia's so-called "shadow fleet", which transports oil in violation of international sanctions imposed over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
For months, Ukraine has targeted Russia's oil industry, arguing that it both fuels the Kremlin's war effort and finances it through export revenues, contributing to acute fuel shortages in one of the world's largest oil-producing countries.
The 1,510-kilometre CPC pipeline links oil fields on Kazakhstan's Caspian coast with Novorossiysk, where crude is loaded onto tankers for export. The pipeline handles about 80% of Kazakhstan's crude oil exports, while the Russian government and state-owned oil companies jointly hold a 31% stake in the consortium.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had carried out further strikes on energy infrastructure inside Russia.
He said Ukraine's Security Service struck three oil depots in Russia's Stavropol region, while a separate military unit hit another fuel-related facility in the same area. Three Russian tankers in the Black Sea were also struck, he added.
Earlier, Stavropol Governor Vladimir Vladimirov said Ukrainian drone attacks had sparked fires at "industrial facilities" in two locations across the region, although he did not specify the sites. He said no casualties had been reported.
Russian independent news outlet Astra reported that three oil depots may have been burning in Stavropol, based on photographs and videos submitted by local residents.
Meanwhile, Russia's Defence Ministry said its air defence systems had shot down 140 Ukrainian drones overnight across eight Russian regions, annexed Crimea, and the Black and Azov seas. It did not disclose how many drones had been launched or how many reached their intended targets.
In Russia's Kursk region, bordering Ukraine, Ukrainian drones struck four apartment buildings, triggering a fire and injuring one person, according to regional Governor Alexander Khinshtein.